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IN fact Jack Lovett did find Inez Victor’s daughter.

In fact Jack Lovett found Inez Victor’s daughter that very day, found her by what he called dumb luck, just got on the regular Air Vietnam flight from Hong Kong to Saigon and landed at Tan Son Nhut and half an hour later he was looking at Jessie Victor.

Jack Lovett called this dumb luck but you or I might not have had the same dumb luck.

You or I for example might not have struck up the connection with the helicopter maintenance instructor who happened to be one of the other two passengers on the Air Vietnam 707 to Saigon that day.

Jack Lovett did.

Jack Lovett struck up a connection with this helicopter maintenance instructor the same way he had struck up connections with all those embassy drivers and oil riggers and airline stewardesses and assistant professors of English literature traveling on Fulbright fellowships and tropical agronomists traveling under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation and desk clerks and ticket agents and salesmen of rice converters and coco dryers and Dutch pesticides and German pharmaceuticals.

By reflex.

The helicopter maintenance instructor who happened to be one of the two other passengers on the Air Vietnam 707 that day had last been in Saigon in 1973, when his contract was terminated. He had been in Los Angeles working for Hughes but now he was coming back to look for the wife and little girl he had left in 1973. The wife had been with her family in Pleiku and he had gotten a call from her saying that the little girl had been blinded on a C-130 during the evacuation south when a leaking hydraulic line overhead sprayed liquid into her face. The wife said Saigon was still safe but he thought it was time to come find her. He had the address she had given him but according to a buddy he had contacted this address did not check out. The helicopter maintenance instructor had seemed cheerful at the beginning of the flight but after two Seagram Sevens his mood had darkened.

What had she done to get on the C-130 in the first place?

Didn’t everybody else walk out of Pleiku?

What about the fucking address?

Jack Lovett had offered him a ride into Saigon and the helicopter maintenance instructor had wanted to make one stop, to check the address with a bartender he used to know at the Legion club.

Which was where Jack Lovett found Jessie Victor.

Serving drinks and French fries at the American Legion club on the main road between Tan Son Nhut and Saigon.

Still wearing her tennis visor.

An ao dai and her tennis visor.

“Hey, no sweat, I’m staying,” Jessie had said to Jack Lovett when he told her to sign off her shift and get in the car. “This dude who comes in has a friend at the embassy, he’ll get the word when they pull the plug.”

Jessie had insisted she was staying but Jack Lovett had said a few words to the bartender.

The words Jack Lovett said were Harry goddamn Victor’s daughter.

“You know this plug you were talking about,” Jack Lovett said then to Jessie. “I just pulled it.”